Pumping It Out

Before deciding to breastfeed a baby, pumping it out would have been reserved for the gym or a workout video at home, but now it is filled with so many more connotations. In order for pumping it out to go well, one needs a healthy dose of Pump-Esteem!

Women are bombarded with information about what should affect our self-esteem, including how our children are being raised, but pump-esteem is about something even more primordial: the desire of mothers to provide the very best food there is for their children, even if they aren not able to physically be with them. Before we knew what it meant to be self-actualized or that there even was a hierarchy of needs we were supposed to be ascending, we had babies to feed.

For those women who made the choice to breastfeed and are now carrying out that choice at least in part by pumping, we want this blog to another contribution to a growing pool of resources that exist on the web and in print about pumping, working, and using breast milk to feed babies. We do not view ourselves as an exhaustive resource nor do we want to reinvent the wheel - rather we are choosing to tell our stories in hopes that they will assist others and looking to hear the stories of others as well as providing links to additional resources.

Though the formula companies say that "breast is best" and while that sounds handy, breastfeeding can be far more challenging than it looks. Even if one is able to start successfully just after delivery (not an easy task in itself), it can be even more challenging to keep it going and to integrate a work life away from baby into the plan. Whether the decision to breastfeed and/or feed with expressed breastmilk was easy or agonizing, the commitment to stick with it needs to be lauded. Pumping has presented previously unimagined challenges for us, but this blog is part of our commitment to overcome them and feed our children in the best way we physically can. We are looking to boost our own pump-esteem while we hope to support a healthy sense of it in others out there. Way to Pump!